Miracle on Walnut Street serves Boulder County needy on Christmas

New holiday menu has Walnut Brewery's distinctive mark

Mark Leahy, left, and Barbara Royval, both of Longmont, take a Christmas dinner offered by volunteer Steve Hunter during the Miracle on Walnut Street at the Walnut Brewery in Boulder on Tuesday. Hunter has volunteered at the event for 4 years.
(Paul Aiken/Daily Camera)

On a cold and snowy Christmas afternoon, Mark Leahy and Barbara Royval would have had nowhere to go if it weren't for the Walnut Brewery and Restaurant.

Former Longmont residents who now live at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, Leahy and Royval were among more than 300 people who were served a free Christmas dinner through the Miracle on Walnut Street event.

"I appreciate it so much," Leahy said. "This is wonderful that they give us this meal. Nothing else is open, and there's nowhere for us to go."

It's also delicious, Leahy said, a sentiment echoed by other guests of the brewery and restaurant.

"I thought it was pretty cool," said Mike Hallsey, a transient who arrived in Boulder a few days before the holiday. "Other towns will have a dinner, but this is higher quality, cleaner and classier."

Walnut Brewery General Manager Kory Kilmer said the brewpub wanted to put its own distinctive mark on the food and serve their guests the same style of food the restaurant offers to paying clients the rest of the year.

Instead of the more traditional holiday meal of turkey and ham with stuffing and sides that they served in years past, cooks drew from the regular menu and offered brewhouse chicken served in a beer gravy, the house mac 'n' cheese, green beans, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.

Guests lined up outside the brewery as people ate in shifts. The brewery distributed roughly 220 tickets through the domestic violence shelter Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence, day shelter and social service agency Bridge House, the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless and the Inn Between in Longmont. The restaurant was prepared to serve up to 400 people.

Advertisement

"Every year we seem to get a little more walk-up traffic," Kilmer said. "I think our reputation keeps spreading."

Frank Day, who founded Old Chicago and Rock Bottom Restaurants Inc., the former parent company of the Walnut Brewery before it merged with Gordon Biersch Restaurant Brewery Group to become CraftWorks Restaurants and Breweries Inc., played the role of Santa Claus, taking pictures with young and old alike.

Rock Bottom Restaurants, through its foundation, started serving holiday dinners to the homeless and other people in need after the purchase of the historic Union Pacific building for the Denver ChopHouse and Brewery displaced roughly 200 people who had been squatting in the building.

This year, the CraftWorks Foundation served more than 10,000 free holiday meals to needy people at six locations around the country, said Angie Leach, executive director of the foundation.

By bringing more resources to the company, the merger has allowed the restaurant chain to expand its charitable giving, including the meals, Leach said.

Roughly 30 volunteers, only a few of them employees of Walnut Brewery, met guests at the door, guided them to seats and took their orders.

Outside, M'lissa McKee, Margaret Pemberton and a group of Boulder teenagers distributed toiletries, new socks, hats and other winter necessities to the guests.

Working at the holiday meal has become a tradition in itself for many Boulder area residents.

Allen Hunt, of Niwot, who is retired from the electronics industry, first volunteered four years ago because a friend was also doing it, and he's been back every year since.

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story